by Mark Zubro
It wasn’t the worst massacre of LGBT people in the Hrrrm system. That had come years before on Tarwall III. Mike shuddered at that memory even though it happened years before he arrived and the laws were changed.
The process of enforcing the collection laws had become a nightmare. Even on the Religionists’ worlds the round-up of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning had turned into a horror. What about the gay people who chose to remain closeted? Were neighbors turning in neighbors?
Figuring out who was gay on the less repressive planets was easier. Those who’d been living openly had been rounded up. Those who were closeted on any world had some sense of protection. Some of those who had been open tried to go back in the closet with varying degrees of success, depending on their cleverness, their history, and sometimes the viciousness of their neighbors.
As Joe had explained before, there were no implants for revealing sexuality. All devices blocked such intrusion. So the authorities weren’t able to use mind control.
The planets controlled by the Religionists had been openly discriminating forever and many gay people had fled them. Now, though many of the places they’d fled to were cooperating with the new collection laws. Other sectors or planets took a basic stance of neutrality. In some places Collection Agencies, find-the-gays-bureaucracy/police forces, had been established.
On many of the planets where gays had lived openly and gotten married, the collection laws had, so far, been ignored for the most part. Some planetary systems kept the Collectors out.
Mike had heard the Senate had been debating laws to force unwilling worlds to comply. Massive force was being contemplated.
Finding out what was happening on so many of these worlds was part of why Mike and Joe had set up the spy network. It was a dangerous game for them to play, but it was their only way of communicating with those who might be friendly, or at least less hostile, in the Senate, or who would find ways to send real experts to the colonists’ preparation training so they would at least have a chance to survive.
The whole operation cost great, gasping trillions and trillions of dollars. To pay for the number of police and military to round people up, the accountants to work out where the money and goods and funds of the rounded up people would go – to the coffers of the church, except on the planets where the Religionists weren’t in charge. To pay for the upkeep, the sewage systems, waste recycling, the transport to the soon-to-be settled planet.
Mike knew one solution was to kill them all in a galactic holocaust, but he knew the Religionists did not have the votes to accomplish that. So far.
Joe said, “We’re surrounded by death. We’re lucky we survived the day.” Mike saw tears running down Joe’s face and realized he was crying as well. They moved into each other’s arms and held each other hoping their warmth might lesson the pain. There wasn’t much else to be done in the face of such horrors.
When their emotions subsided, Joe whispered, “At least we’re alive and together.” Through the past months, it had been their love for each other that had gotten them through.
Now in their room in the face of the day’s attack and pile of horrific news, Mike said, “I’m going to make Bex stop all the killings no matter where they try to exterminate us.”
“How?” Joe had asked the impossible question.
Mike hung his head. Mike had never been a kill-the-other-guy, a gun shoot out, NRA crazy person. Now he wasn’t so sure what he’d do. The problem was he had a lot of power, maybe the most power, and it didn’t do him a lot of good.
Joe said, “If you threaten to kill Bex, you know what happens. People die. They’ve got the weapons and the transportation and the communication. What have we got?”
“Me. And that’s not enough. Doing nothing feels so wrong.” He sighed and said, “Putting us in charge was kind of a joke, right? They wanted us to fail.”
“They want us to die.” The defeatism and flat monotone in Joe’s voice matched how Mike was feeling. “He’s using your unwillingness to kill him as an opening to be arbitrarily cruel against you. He doesn’t care who he hurts. You care. That may be the end of you yet.” Joe ended with what had been their conclusion to so many of these discussions. “All we can do is keep breathing and wait for help.”
Mike added the usual disclaimer. “As realistic or unrealistic as any other option.”
They grabbed their food for some dinner. Food preparation was simple for prisoners on the ship. What were called “energy balls” had replaced the gruel-like substance he’d been fed for the first months of his captivity. Energy balls were off-white, the size of marbles, and tasted like what Mike thought toasted Styrofoam might taste like. Supposedly they contained all the supplements needed for survival.
When first presented with one of them Mike had said, ages ago, it seemed, back on the ship when he’d been told about having energy balls exclusively, Mike had said, “Now we don’t even get that gruel-like shit they’ve been feeding me?”
Joe had said, “Until we grow our own gruel producing plants, yes. Planetary exploration requires all kinds of sacrifices.”
“I’m not sure giving up gruel is much of a big deal.”
“The energy balls give enough nutrition for the body. Whether it’s better than gruel is another issue.”
With energy balls, you always felt hungry and never satisfied, but you didn’t starve. Right now Mike preferred the tiny things instead of having to carry tons of gruel.
When he first had an energy ball, Mike had said, “Bland is the best I can think of, although it kind of tastes like my cooking.”
Joe said, “They’re good indefinitely.”
“Define ‘indefinitely.’”
“Enough forevers for our lifetimes.”
“If we live that long.”
They could still get the gruel if they so desired, but that was all the variety prisoners got. Mike thought the energy balls were more boring than the gruel, which he hadn’t thought would have been possible. He’d give a great deal of the galaxy to be able to pick up a phone and order a sausage and pepperoni pizza.
Joe’s communicator buzzed. He glanced at the readout and jumped to his feet. He said, “An emergency on deck 37.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As they rushed out the door and down the hall, Mike asked, “What is it?”
“Attempted suicide.”
Despair and self-destruction among the colonists was another thing Mike and Joe worried about. They had large group meetings of all one hundred men and the topic had been discussed, but no one had come up with a solution.
They had no idea how many of this first one hundred had been picked. Mike had seen no pattern of competence or psychological stability among them. The ones from Religionist worlds seemed completely random. Since the Religionists wanted the project to fail, like the Republicans wanted the government to fail, maybe they were selecting the most bone-headed people they could find, but it didn’t even seem to be that well-planned. Other men from less hostile systems had been picked for expertise and experience. Mike was grateful for these.
Since there would be no guards on the planet, prisoners could certainly just walk away and die in the weather extremes. Their captors didn’t care much and many of them would have preferred if they all did so.
Mike was determined to do all he could to keep all of them alive, but to also help them keep their individual choices as options. For life or death, he didn’t know what to do. Just another part of the hopeless mess he was in that he was determined to figure a way out of.
Following their communicators, a few minutes brought Mike and Joe to a corridor crowded with men looking toward the far end. Seeing Mike and Joe, the men parted and let them through.
In an alcove of the last room they found Krim unconscious on the floor. Krim was the youngest of the prisoners. He was fourteen and always very shy and quiet. He was an emaciated kid even before they started on a steady diet of gruel or energy balls. A perpetually wounded loo
k filled his puppy-dog soft brown eyes. His acne and lack of assurance were each as prevalent as the other. He also had the teenage habit of tripping over motes of dust no one else could see. On the ship once he’d tripped into Captain Zmond who’d threatened to flail the kid alive. Krim had just missed crashing into Bex once, but Joe had reached out a hand and saved him.
Krim was in the arms of Bir, the second youngest member of the colony. He was slightly taller and even thinner than Krim, but Bir smiled and laughed at about anything. Except this. As he held his friend, tears rolled down his cheeks.
Bir looked up when Mike and Joe entered and bent over the two boys. Mike saw that Krim was taking great, shallow, gasping breaths.
Mike said, “We need to take him to a healing portal.”
Bir said, “Captain Zmond has refused.”
Mike’s red fury did not stop him from taking out his communicator. A few taps and he had the captain’s personal code entered. Several seconds more and the captain’s face appeared. It was like Skyping on Earth. Mike said, “We need medical assistance now.”
The captain snorted, “Prisoners don’t get to demand anything.”
Mike said, “I will blow this entire ship to smithereens and you and all of us in it will be in space eternal in seconds. The facilities will be made available now.”
Zmond said, “You wouldn’t.”
Mike said, “Watch me!” A few taps on his communicator and Mike’s blue glow filled the space around. He knew Zmond could see it. Mike wasn’t sure how much power he had. He knew from when he’d defended himself, he was capable of the power to kill another person and destroy things around him. Right now, he was angry enough to try. Let Zmond figure out who was bluffing. The key was Zmond knew that Bex had lost to Mike, and his implant was feared throughout this entire portion of the galaxy.
Zmond gave a weak smile. “Fine. Take him to the healing facility.”
Mike and Joe carried Krim down the halls. A number of the men followed them. Mike didn’t know if one of Krim’s ragged breaths might be his last. Mike had seen the healing portal on Joe’s ship do wonders. They placed Krim in the middle of a round disc on the floor. Immediately a tower of light and power surrounded Krim and extended from the floor to the ceiling. The boy’s breathing began to ease.
Mike turned to Bir. He asked, “What happened?”
Karsh, one of the men in the group, elbowed his way to the front. “This place did it. The kid gave up. Who can blame him? There’s no point to this. I’m surprised we haven’t all given up.”
In meetings Karsh always had the most negative things to say, comments that would point out the hopelessness of their situation, as if the rest of them didn’t know this well enough already. Mike found his abrasive personality and his constant predictions of gloom and doom unhelpful. Mostly he wanted to throttle the guy.
Bir began to cry. Mike put his arm around his shoulder.
Joe looked at two other men while pointing at Karsh, “Get him out of here.”
“You can’t throw me out,” Karsh said. “I have a right to be here.” His protests faded as the two men hustled him away. Mike knew it would be another grievance that Karsh would throw in their faces at some future meeting. He didn’t much care. The other men backed out and left as well.
Mike glanced at Krim. The tower of light had begun to rotate. Mike knew that this meant that Krim was beginning to heal internally.
Mike and Joe sat on a bench with Bir where they could talk and watch Krim.
“What happened?” Mike asked.
Bir turned red.
Mike guessed. “He was doing something he shouldn’t.”
Bir nodded.
Joe said, “Was he offering bribes to a guard?”
Bir whispered, “Sexual favors.”
Mike knew that was a dangerous thing for a guard to do. Straight guys getting blow jobs from gay guys seemed to be a universal concept, but here now, with the draconian laws, if it was found out that you’d let a gay guy get near your cock, you were suspect as well. It was dangerous times for straight guys who simply wanted to have a good time, didn’t care how they got off, or who were willing to use any random orifice whether male or female. It could also mean the gay guy could possibly blackmail his partner. Mike saw this as a situation rife with possibilities for abuse and danger for both sides.
Bir said, “I told him he shouldn’t be doing it. It was dangerous.”
“Which guard was it?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“What privileges could he get?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he was hoping not to be left on the planet.”
“None of these guys has the power to offer that.”
“After the attack today, the guard decided to tell Krim the truth that he was just using the kid and that he, the guard, had no intention of ever helping him. He was just using him. The guard presumed that no one would believe Krim if he tried to make an accusation. Krim was crushed. He’d believed the guards promises. He thought he was going to get away. Krim told me all this earlier. He was really depressed. I tried to get him to stay with me, but he said he’d be okay and walked off to be by himself.”
The glow around Krim began to fade. In a few minutes, he lay on the floor. The three of them knelt next to him. Moments later Krim opened his eyes.
“What happened?” Bir asked.
Krim lowered his eyes.
Mike said, “We know you were trading favors with a guard.”
Krim glared daggers at Bir. “You told!”
“I thought you were going to die!”
“Which guard?” Joe asked.
“It won’t do any good to betray him. He’ll just deny anything happened, and I have no proof. He told me tonight that he couldn’t save me. I just wanted to give up. I left him where we met tonight. I kept eating energy balls until I passed out.”
They got him to his feet. They walked him back to his room. Bir promised to stay with him.
Once inside their room, Mike and Joe held each other. Mike said, “I’m not giving up. If nothing else until I get a last chance to defeat Bex, destroy the motherfucker.”
Joe said, “I will always love you.”
They fell into bed exhausted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning Mike cuddled in Joe’s arms as long as he could. He dragged himself to the shower/bathroom facility, the same as it had been on the ship to Hrrrm and in the prison except this one combined all functions in one.
They had a week more of tedious meetings before arriving at their prison. He didn’t know which he dreaded most—the thought of all the meetings or another attack or the actual moments of their arrival.
First thing that morning, he made a special effort to check on Krim. The boy seemed fully recovered. Bir hovered around him. Mike thought it was good that Krim had someone who cared what happened to him.
At a meeting at which Karsh was present, Mike noted that the man was in total asshole mode. Not much different than usual. Today he was ranting about why they were being sent to 6743-0A. Mike couldn’t imagine a more useless thing to bring up for discussion. Short of blasting him into non-existence there wasn’t much to be done about it.
Once Mike and Joe had decided that they would be setting up a mini-democracy, people began speaking at meetings at endless length. Maybe Karsh thought he could filibuster himself or themselves out of being sent to prison. Mike had long since realized that stupidity was a universal concept.
The night before they were to land, Joe, Mike, and the other colony leaders were summoned to Captain Zmond’s quarters. Throughout their weeks-long journey, the Captain had frequently invited them to his quarters. At these meetings the captain never mentioned all the screeching and haranguing he did. Instead, he would insist they talk with him, but what invariably took place was a lengthy monologue on the place of religiosity in the captain’s life. Mike assumed that the captain ate, drank, slept, and took a shit with his God on his shoulder.
Entering the captain’s quarters, Mike saw Zmond sprawled in his favorite arm chair. The man’s fat draped over the sides of the chair, specially designed to hold his bulk. His nose stuck out and up at a forty-five degree angle, his head was bald. He twirled the gold braid that hung from his tangerine tunic.
The other colony leaders were already present: Udd, housing; Brux, communications; Sry, mining. Udd, muscular, blond and hard-working. Brux was the resident drag queen. Sry was near sixty with silver hair, and a dignity and pride that Mike found comforting.
“Sit down, all of you.” Zmond made the command sound jovial. “Help yourself to some refreshment.” It was real food. Mike couldn’t bring himself to taste the slightest nibble. The others followed his lead. Zmond’s benign smile faded at their refusal. He continued on, “Probably nervous with landing so soon. Can’t blame you myself. I’ve been to hundreds of planets. I still get excited when I get to a new one. Of course the case here for you is slightly different.”
Mike could barely listen to the man babble and bumble. He wanted to strangle the self-satisfied son of a bitch. He tuned out the captain, looked at the others. They had heard all of this before. Zmond spoke on, ignoring the indifference and anxiety in the room.
Apropos of nothing, the captain announced, “I have some final instructions for you from the Senate.” He rearranged his fat, pressed several buttons on the console next to him. “I was instructed to wait until now to give you this information. I have not seen it before myself.” He scanned the data and pursed his lips then said, “Most of this you know. Supply ships once a week, progress reports once a month, inspection every two months, new colonists, ten thousand a month starting in six months, one hundred thousand starting in twelvemonths, then a million, and so on. Complete agricultural self-sufficiency in a year.” He droned on with the lists.
Mike had the impossibilities memorized. Over and over in the past six months of training, he’d heard the statistics. Even other prison colonies had been better equipped. The most precious thing they were short of was time. Far too soon, the colony would be teeming with millions of uprooted, ill-trained, psychologically damaged people.
